The Guideways through Mountains and Seas (Shanhaijing) is a unique and enduring record of a wide range of beliefs held by the ancient Chinese about their world, encompassing religion, mythology, geography, flora, fauna, minerals, and medicine. An encyclopedic cosmography mostly compiled from the Warring States period to the Western Han dynasty (c.4^th -c. 1st cent. B.C.E.), it has been repeatedly hand-copied, reprinted, and re-edited through the centuries into our own time... Since the nineteenth century, it has also attracted the attention of foreign scholars and in recent years has been translated into at least five different languages...